Awesomesauce without the sauce

The other afternoon, I had lunch at a small luncheonette/diner in downtown Albany, a place called Winding Brooks. It’s a good place, it has a buffet and the prices are reasonable. Get your food quickly, pay for everything, and you’re outside to enjoy the afternoon sunshine in nothing flat.

The buffet table that day included several different pastas – spaghetti, ziti, bowties, etc. Nice. Grabbing a styrofoam clamshell carrier, I filled it with several different taste treats.

I paid for my food – courteous customer service at Winding Brooks, a fair price for the food, nothing out of the ordinary.

Until I walked out the door and realized – I hadn’t put any spaghetti sauce on the pasta.

And I was okay with that.

Look. I don’t have a problem with spaghetti sauce, nor do I have any issues with people who do like spaghetti sauce. It’s fine. So’s alfredo sauce and marinara sauce and all the other sauces out there.

But maybe I just appreciate my spaghetti or my pasta cooked straight, with maybe a pat of butter and a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese. Not so much Parmesan cheese, so that it looks like something more suitable to Jean-Claude Killy…

I could go on a diatribe about trying to eat sauced spaghetti and eventually finding tiny drops of red sauce on my white business shirt. Or dropping the meatball off my fork, and having it land in the sauce – little splash – and, of course, the proximity of the sauce splashing onto my clothing, and the likelihood that the sauce stains won’t EVER come out – but I won’t go into that diatribe. I’ll save that diatribe for another time.

And I would never tell someone who has brought me spaghetti with sauce to take the sauce back, wipe it off the noodles, and re-serve me. I’m not that gauche.

In fact, I’m going to argue that if you haven’t tried pasta without sauce, you may actually be in for a treat.

Oh I’m sure I’ll get a ton of comments from people, calling me a nihilist for eating my pasta without sauce. “Geez, Chuck, do you eat the peanut butter right off the spreading knife, too?” “Didn’t your parents bring you up like a normal person, you should always put sauce on spaghetti!” Or my personal favorite, “If people didn’t put sauce on their spaghetti, all the saucemakers would go out of business!”

Yeah, that logic is akin to “we should throw litter on the ground, or else the sanitation workers and cleanup crews would be out of a job with no trash to pick up.”

Anyways, back to the spaghetti.

There’s really something to be said about spaghetti in all its buttery soft al dente goodness. It’s not ostentatious, it’s not demanding, its simplicity actually enhances the taste palate. It’s utilitarian and it’s Usonian, from first noodle to last. I don’t need to smother it in red sauce, to the point where it’s more soup than entree.

Now what kind of butter to mix with the pasta? Hmm… Again, I’m not a food snob. A little cube of Stewart’s butter, or some Land o’ Lakes margarine is just as tasty as any other expensive butter or spread. Maybe even a splash of olive oil when the spaghetti is boiled, just to keep the noodles from sticking together on the plate.

Mmm.

You know what… I don’t know why I haven’t decided to make some sauceless spaghetti for myself of late. In fact, I’m going to make some now. I may have extra, so if you’re hungry, come on over to the Town/Village.

One Response

Can I hear an “AMEN” !! I agree, with perhaps a slight adjustment. I like a generous sprinkling of parmesan, but not the kind in the green foil shaker. Fresh is best. Sometimes I add a smidgen of garlic salt too.

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